9.17.2011

People love to talk horse poop about stuff they haven't tried for themselves. My favorite is the put down that you shouldn't buy micro four thirds cameras because you can't do narrow depth of field effects. I shot this at Starbucks this morning while sitting around with a bunch of my swimmer buddies, swilling coffee. Pen EP3 with Pen F 40mm 1.4 MF lens.

Let's get a few things out of the way first. I walked into Precision Camera and paid for my Olympus EP3. Olympus isn't sponsoring my review or giving me this stuff so I feel pretty okay saying just about anything I want about the EP3, good or bad. I was immediately interested in the Pens on their launch because I am a collector of Pen F film cameras and their incredibly good Pen F lenses. The stuff is downright amazing. I rushed to the store two years ago to look at the EP1 and I passed on that camera. There was no way to do eye level viewfinding. No EVF. I'd have to wear reading glasses to see fine detail on the screen. Just not going to happen. But I didn't get too upset because I knew it was only a matter of time before they released a model with an EVF. Well, we got the EVF in the form of the VF-2 and while many people don't like this solution I'm very, very happy with it. In fact, I own two of them and now use one on the EP3 and one on the EP2 or the EPL1 depending on which camera I'm toting as a back up. I got the EP3 a couple days ago but today was the first time I had free time to walk around and shoot with it. I put the kit lens in the small bag but I also dragged along a bunch of the old glass, including the (All Pen F lenses from the 1970's) 25mm 2.8, the 40mm 1.4, the 60mm 1.5, and one of the two 50-90mm zooms. It all fit, with my phone and an extra battery, in a bag about half the size of an 9 by 12 inch envelope. The Pen lens are all metal construction with buttery smooth focus rings and the build quality (optically and mechanically) is nearly on par with older generation Leica M lenses.